By Robert Clements
There’s Music In the Boos..!
Yes, there’s music in the booing of a crowd. A music that lies within us and will only start playing when hardship or challenges or the booing of friends and enemies stirs us to try even harder in some venture where the world expects us to fail, and then we succeed, bringing through our success a melody, a rhapsody and a roaring crescendo that will be heard the world over!
There’s a legend of a German baron who at his castle on the Rhine, stretched wires from tower to tower, so that the winds would convert them into an Aeolian harp.
After he had installed the wires, a soft breeze played about the castle, but no music came out.
One night there arose a mighty tempest. The hills and castle were assaulted by the fury of mighty winds and late in the night the baron went to the threshold to look out upon the terror of the storm. Standing there, above the sounds of the storm he heard the harp filling the air with soft music.
A tempest was needed to bring out the music.
And, so it is with us dear friends: Tempestuous times may find us buffeted by the strong storms of life. If we are out at sea and not in the harbour, we may find it difficult to draw into a sheltered place safe from the storm.
Life tosses us around and we find it difficult to navigate rough waters even if we are guided by a compass.
But, and here I want each one of you who have been buffeted lately to listen: It is in this very process of groping around and fighting the tempest that we find we have inner strength and derive a strong sense of purpose.
Our own Aeolian harps get tuned to play music that makes the world richer for its sounds.
Ancient mariners found out that it was not age alone that improved the quality of the fibre of wood in a ship, but the straining and wrenching of the vessels by the wind and the waves, the chemical action of the bilge water and the weight of many kinds of cargo she carried.
It’s the same with human lives stressed and tested in times of conflict and strife!
A friend of mine, started a courier company a few years ago, “Do you think I’ll be a good businessman, Bob?” he asked me.
“Only when you face tough times,” I told him, “Will you know!”
And as I see him tough and resolute everyday even as his company goes up and down, I look at him and hear sweet music, the strains of the Aeolian harp above the terrors of the tempest, how lovely the sound!
So, be strong my friends, hold onto the vision of distant harbour lights and row with the tempest howling: Then and only then will you hear a sweet melody!
And now I’d like to bring into this column someone who faced the boos, the sneers and jeers of being called a ‘pappu’ and other degrading names, but like the aeolian harp in the castle, those same storms are producing new music from him. This is not a political article, even though I might be referring to one of the two main contenders in the soon to be fought general elections: Rahul Gandhi! For nearly a decade he has been joked about, lampooned, ridiculed and booed, and yet suddenly the whole nation is looking at him as a formidable opponent to the once invincible Modi!
In Karnataka he started making music out of the loud boos he had to undergo!
I remember an instance when I was called to be a judge at the IIT Mood Indigo for One Act plays. I asked whether I could bring my two daughters along, and they gave me permission to do so. Since I loved plays, I enjoyed each one of the plays put up by the different Mumbai colleges, despite the noisy whistles and other sounds boisterous crowds are bound to let off. Somewhere in the middle of the competition I realized there was an even bigger commotion and found one of the organizers at my ear, telling me that some of the women participants who had not yet performed wanted to call the competition off, because there was too much booing and other sounds from the crowd.
I asked for the mike and went up to speak, and these might not be my exact words but am sure went something likewise, “Participants!” I said, “There is no such thing as a perfect audience! As you go through life, whenever you dare to do something different, or go up in front to do something better, there will always be people who will try to boo you down. Your job is not to tell them to shut up! Your job is to quieten those boos with your performance! That is the challenge you will face, and today you can decide whether you have it within you to do so or run away!”
“Today decide to make sweet music out of the sneers and jeers from the crowd!”
They all performed. And performed well, and I do remember there were moments of pin drop silence as actors and actresses excelled themselves on stage! I would like to think that my two school going children learnt something from that experience as both became excellent at public speaking, the elder, even becoming a TV anchor with Bloomberg and my younger, so proficient with words as a very successful clinical psychologist.
They learnt that day to make music out of the boos!
Ignore the boos as you go through life! Dare to quieten those people despite their jeering and heckling with your performance! That’s how you win this journey called life, that’s how you also win against people whom others till now thought were invincible!
Just imagine if the one they called ‘pappu’ becomes the ‘prime minister’ how well he learnt to play the harp in the storm..!
The Author conducts an Online Writers and Speakers Course. For more details send a thumbs-up to him on WhatsApp 9892572883.
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